Gluten Sensitivity Scam…Part 3

Dude Note: To honor Celiac Awareness Month and to help raise awareness of our disease, I will be attempting 31 blog posts in 31 days. My goal is simple: to make most of them not suck. If you’ve got ideas for a good post or if you’d like to guest blog, by all means, contact me. Your input is more than welcome. And if you know anybody with celiac disease, give them some extra lovin’ this month. They deserve it.

Note: As of August 17, 2012, I have been legally required to change all references of Gluten Relief to Gluten Sensitivity since it turns out Jason violated a trademark by using that name. You can read about it here.

Jason is the CEO of The Wise Alternative, the company that promotes and sells Gluten Sensitivity, the miracle drug that “allows even the most severe celiacs to consume gluten and stay healthy” (his words, not mine).

If you have not read the first two parts of this story, go here and here, and especially read Jason’s comment toward the bottom of the posts, and then come on back.

——————————

Thanks again for your response Jason.

I have no desire to carry on an endless conversation with you, but I will respectfully respond to your latest comments, and then from here I will take all of the necessary next steps to have Gluten Relief removed from the market.

You see Jason, people can live their lives one of two ways: they can live for themselves or they can live for others. And living for others does not mean sacrificing your own life for the good of others. I’m a strong believer that the more you try to help others, the more you’ll be helping yourself.

It’s basically good vs. evil Jason. And I suggest you read other’s comments about your product and realize that you are on the wrong side of the fence.

But onto the specifics of your comment.

You Say:“I understand the frustration you must feel.”

I Say:
“Stop kissing my ass. You have no idea the frustration I feel that you are profiting off celiacs and doing untold harm to them.”

You Say:“We as a natural health company cannot use the word cure and have not done so. J.E. Block MD, FACP uses the word in the study summary in his capacity as a medical professional of 50 years, noted author and former professor.”

I Say:
“What’s the difference? Because you are a retailer, you cannot say it. But the person behind the product does indeed say it. To me, it’s one and the same.”

You Say:“Patient and customer confidentiality is paramount as you well know.”

I Say:
“It’s another convenience where you do not need to prove your product works.”

You Say:“The Money Back Guarantee assures you peace of mind with a laboratory test.”

I Say:
“The money back guarantee is a pure come-on to increase sales. Few doctors accept positive EnteroLab test results as proof of anything and tests offered by EnteroLab haven’t yet been validated by outside labs or through peer-reviewed research.”

You Say:“If we wanted to make money we would develop a product that a person had to take forever.”

I Say:
“As Zach so awesomely pointed out yesterday, a scam artist only needs the scammed to buy the product 1 time (for $140 in your case). If you’ve sold to 5,000 dummies that’s $700,000. That’s making money in my book.”

You Say:“The debate is interesting and the time and effort involved in such a product is more than you can imagine and we look forward to it.”

I Say:
“A debate usually means a fair argument on both sides. To me, this is you against every celiac alive. That’s not a debate. That’s a scam.”

—————

You can reply to this post if you want Jason. But you are not convincing me or anybody else that your product is nothing but a sham.

42 Comments

Julie

Great post again! I love that you’re calling him out on his BS.
Unfortunately, I don’t think they will ever take this off the market, unless they are MADE to.
The scary thing is those Celiacs that have “silent” symptoms will never know if they’re destroying their bodies by eating gluten under the “protection” of this “miracle drug”.
And right, I don’t understand this “money back guarantee”. If you don’t eat gluten for 6 months, you’re not going to have ANY tests show positive. Once again, they’re just taking advantage of those less knowledgeable.

Did you notice around 1:09 Jason suggests to take a companion product? The website also says “We recommend Glandular Calm be taken in conjunction with the first bottle of Gluten Relief.” So that’s an additional $36 per person.

Gluten Relief ($139.95) + Glandular Calm ($36.00) = $175.95 per month

Let’s assume customers take the recommended 3-month supply. That is $527.85 total per person. Multiply that by the 5,000 (the estimated # of customers Zach used in the previous post) and you get: $2,639,250!

While I find it really hard to believe that Gluten Relief is a multi-million dollar money maker, that is a TON of money. But you know, Jason and J & L aren’t in it for the money… they want to CURE us of Celiac.

I absolutely LOVE what you’ve done with this series. You took it straight to this guy and made it clear that the Celiac community DOES have a voice and the b**ls to call people out. Keep it up Gluten Dude!

Jason comes across like a used car salesman on this video. I wouldn’t trust some guy in a casual plaid shirt with annoying rock music blasting in the background to cure me with his magic potion. Besides the point, he is a SCAM artist, loud and clear!

on a slightly different note, I read the posts by “Alice” on celiac.com
It turns out that “Alice” is a male, not a female and that he’s banned from all groups on that website. Something fishy about the whole thing…

IM

Well done GD for keeping up the fight. OMG, I think Jason actually seriously believes he’s right! It’s almost a cult-like mentality when someone is so singularly focussed on believing what they’ve been told, that they can’t see the real truth. I’d be interested to know who else is actually behind this company.

Staci

If I could have any wish in the world, I’d wish for you to have Celiacs Disease. I’d want you to go through the most agonizing suffering pain that we all go through. I’d want you to have no hope, depression, thoughts of suicide (not that i have, just read about others..just to clarify), and yet again, crippling pain; in your joints, in your stomach, in your head. I want you to suffer for YEARS and then take the product you’re pushing. then I want to you to eat an entire loaf of french garlic bread right out of the oven and see if youre body can handle the gluten over load.

The Gluten Dude

Kelly

I didn’t read through everyone’s comments here, as I’m sure we’re all along the same lines. What I did suffer through, was Jason attempting to speak. Uneducated, farm boy is what I was getting. And he should have really studied his cue cards before attempting to read off of them. Anyone who understands gluten free living, Celiac disease and the like, would not need to read off of cue cards, as we can all spew health information from the top of our heads we are that educated on this disease.

I’m curious – how did you find out about Gluten Relief? Did they come to you? Some person (that I don’t know) in Australia tweeted me to take a look at her blog post where she was considering buying this. As if I were individually targeted as a potential fool for the scam.

I find it interesting that you can’t find out what’s in the bottle. Have you found out? I looked at the website and there is no list of ingredients – which all over the counter and prescription meds always have available to the public.

So it is obviously a scam, and hopefully you calling him out on this will stop others from considering this as a viable option. Nice work!

Julie

Heather- It’s buried in the website, but the ingredients are listed. I asked the same question on his Facebook page and he listed them. It doesn’t really tell you much, though, because the active ingredients are apparently “formulas” that they’ve derived:
Active Ingredients:
1. Lycopodium clavatum 12x
2. Pulsatilla 12x

The Gluten Dude

You’re right it doesn’t say much. Except that this is an herbal remedy. Lycopodium seems to be prescribed to help bloating, and Pulsatilla is used for colds with a lot of thick mucus. So maybe it will help relieve symptoms, but it seems unlikely that either of the herbs in those formulas would break down gluten. First time I ever heard of DNA and RNA as ingredients! Thanks for the info, Julie!

Man…you have got a lot of cajones. You not only spam my site with this guy’s crap (or your crap should I say), but now you’re on my Facebook page too? The only reason I haven’t banned you is because it’s actually entertaining. Any time you post, I also post and people see right thru your BS. You’re not helping your cause.

Jade

So about the ingredients…Does anyone know how you can have “DNA” as an ingredient? DNA from what??? From wheat? Wheat has DNA. So does a pig liver. My point is that these are generic ingredients that look like a child came up with big “sciency” words.

Emily

ok yeah fine, another guy trying to make money of coeliacs…yawn, just like the “vaccination” and the numerous pharmaceuticals idiots have been trying to manufacture for years…. because as you say people are desperate and even a placebo can often be better than nothing for the almost inevitable “stuff up” – but this Seelig business fascinates me – how could he stay in business for more than five minutes?

Surely people were eating the stuff and vomiting it back up again – you’d think – unlike a trace poisoning – that it would be pretty easy to figure out? Don’t get me wrong I’m so pleased the guy was nabbed and given a big long sentence – because it sends a message – but even so what the f-? Or were people saying things – but being ignored because the whole gluten free thing is just a “fad”?

Bethanne

Well, I know all of this is old news on this blog, but I’m a bit bummed that I cannot watch the infamous video. Most of these posts are from roughly around the time that I was diagnosed. Even as a newly diagnosed celiac, I would never for a moment have thought that this was a valid product. There are so many things that I agree with on here: Celiacs are very well educated. We have to be. And even a newly diagnosed half-educated celiac like me can tell that this is a crock pot of smelly DNA. My first trip to our local nutritionist made me want to throttle him as I was told that “yes, you will be able to eat gluten again” and “if you go to your local li-berry, you can find more information on your condition”. Well, I didn’t go to my li-berry, I used Amazon and the mighty interwebs. I have found many things. Including, self education and research is my best friend. My second best friend is those people who anonymously influence my life through their struggles with celiacs, have taught me how to cook, and have taught me that I don’t have to hate my life, just hate my celiacs.

I am an advocate by nature. It’s what brings home my DNABacon. I work in a field in which I educate and advocate to my local and federal legislators every day (in my field we use the term ‘educate’ as you cannot lobby or advocate with federal funds)-keep in mind, my field is not celiac related so I don’t have any inside connections, but I’m never above making cold calls to officials to “educate”. So, if I can be of any use… or if there is any use of my “educating” skills…. let me know… I’m here.

Oh, and thank you to everyone on here. It’s amazing to find real a sense of community, when I have none in the non-celiac state in which I live.

The Gluten Dude

There is a reason why the video was taken down. It seems that the smart folks over at The Wise Alternative violated a trademark when they used “Gluten Relief” as their product name. And the people who own the trademark made them completely remove Gluten Relief from their product, website, videos, etc.

They are also requesting that I remove my references to Gluten Relief, which I am working on.

I’ll be blogging about this soon.

I can’t believe your nutritionist said you’ll be able to eat gluten again. What a fool!!

Kimberly

Background on me: I am not Celiac, but sensitive to gluten. Since I couldn’t sleep at 3 am, I was up searching my phone and stumbled upon your blog (via a tweet to Dana Vollmer!) I started reading your blogs about this product. A VERY long story short, it sounded familiar to me and lo and behold, I have been IN this store in Tulsa! My friend and I were waiting for another store to open and went inside to check it out. We were viewing all the products on the shelf when a rather large older man (Dr. Jack Wise) asked us some questions. Well, he wound up “diagnosing” us by looking at us and having us do a few random things. He told my friend she is definitely Celiac (which I highly doubt) and told me I “possibly” have issues with gluten. I told him I had a sensitivity to gluten and he replied, “That is Bull****. He said there was not such thing as “sensitivity”, just Celiac. Before we left the store, he directed us to this product, etc. etc. He was strange, looked incredibly unhealthy and honestly, we giggled almost the entire time! (I am in my 40s… I don’t “giggle” when speaking to someone I don’t know.) It was super strange to say the least. Needless to say, I didn’t purchase his products that HE formulated. (I thought to myself, well if it is so wonderful, why is it in a little store in Tulsa and not a nation-wide sensation??) Super weird! Just thought I would chime in! (And, I NEVER post online…. I couldn’t resist this one!)

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Somebody who's been gluten-free since 2007 due to a diagnosis of Celiac disease, where the doc said my numbers were "off the charts". Someone who can steer you in the right direction when it comes to going gluten-free. And someone who will always give you the naked truth about going gluten free.

I didn’t find freedom, a better life or any of that other crap when I got diagnosed. With all due respect to Hunter S. Thompson, I found fear and loathing of an unknown world. But if I can share my wisdom, tell my stories and make the transition easier on you, I’ve done my job.